Movie Review: Laurin

LAURIN – Visual Vengeance Blu-ray Review by Matt Boiselle

Dark secrets, childhood nightmares, and Gothic atmosphere collide in Laurin, writer/director Robert Sigl’s haunting 1990 debut — a beautifully unsettling film that proves horror doesn’t need buckets of blood to get under your skin.

Set in rural Germany in 1901, Laurin centers on a quiet, observant young girl growing up largely unnoticed by the self-absorbed adults around her. With her father away at sea and her mother dead following a violent accident, Laurin finds herself essentially alone just as something sinister begins taking hold of her seemingly idyllic village.

Children are disappearing and turning up murdered, while Laurin experiences disturbing visions connected to the victims. As the adults desperately search for answers, they remain oblivious to the darker world surrounding them — one filled with buried secrets, childhood trauma, and an evil much closer than anyone realizes.

Writer/director Robert Sigl creates a striking Gothic mystery that favors atmosphere, haunting imagery, and slowly mounting dread over conventional horror thrills. There’s an almost dark fairy-tale quality to Laurin, with its beautiful period setting masking something deeply unsettling underneath. More than three decades after its original release, the film remains an eerie and visually impressive piece of European genre filmmaking.

For the film’s 35th anniversary, Visual Vengeance, through MVD Entertainment, gives Laurin its first-ever North American release with a director-approved special edition packed with archival material and newly produced extras.

The film is presented complete and uncut from a director-approved 2K HD transfer of the original 35mm film elements, with both English- and German-language versions available. The German version also features updated subtitle translations created with assistance from Sigl.

One of the release’s most fascinating inclusions is an original VHS rough cut from Sigl’s private collection, featuring audio recorded on set and allowing viewers to hear the actors’ actual voices before the film was overdubbed.

Film historian Troy Howarth, author of Innocence Lost: Robert Sigl and the Curse of Laurin, provides a feature-length commentary, while the nearly hour-long Laurin c’est moi offers a new interview with Sigl. The disc also includes The Making of Laurin archival documentary and interviews with actors Dóra Szinetár and Barnabás Tóth, cinematographer Nyika Jancsó, and film historian Jonathan Rigby.

Two award-winning Robert Sigl short films are included as well: 1983’s The Christmas Tree (Der Weihnachtsbaum) and 2021’s Coronoia 21: It Comes with the Snow. Additional material includes Sigl’s Bavarian Film Awards presentation, the original trailer, Visual Vengeance trailers, optional English closed captions, and an impressive eight photo galleries featuring previously unseen material from Sigl’s personal archives.

The physical edition includes a collectible folded mini-poster and Blu-ray sleeve featuring the original home-video artwork. First-pressing copies add a six-page liner-notes essay by Tony Strauss of Weng’s Chop magazine, a limited-edition mini-postcard set reproducing original German promotional materials, a “Stick Your Own” VHS sticker sheet, and a limited-edition O-card featuring artwork by Justin Coons.